Lifea K

Date: Tue, 24 May 1994 06:28:31 -0700
From: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate)
Message-Id: [199405241328.GAA03395@netcom.com]
To: JWry.dl@netcom.com
Subject: Life  A.K
Reply-to: cate3@netcom.com
Status: R

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Date: 2 Sep 93 11:19:35 PDT (Thursday)
Subject: Life  A.K




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The following are selections that I've pulled from a collection
Mike Sierra has been building over the years
[sierra@ora.com]                 

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[[[[[[ Attached TEXT file follows ]]]]]]
The following news items and quotations were taken from The
American Spectator, The Boston Globe, Esquire, Harper's,
Heterodoxy, Insight, The National Review, The New Republic, The New
York Times, Penthouse, Reason, Spy, Time, TV Guide, The Wall Street
Journal, The Washington Monthly, and more "year in review" issues
than I care to mention.

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Five months after Manuel Noriega was removed from power in 1990, Congress and the Bush administration appropriated $420 million in foreign aid for Panama. But a quarter of the money, dispensed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), apparently went to Panamanian banks to repay American loans, provide middle-class Panamanians with mortgages and benefit a few large corporations. "Crazy as it sounds," says Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), "we let Panama use our aid to pay its debts to us so we can say, 'See, they paid their bills,' and then send them more money."

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President Clinton stated that "If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, I would appoint him Secretary of State. And then I would suggest to Senator Gore that the two of us resign so he could become president." While it may be a worthy idea, the fact is that the second in line to presidential succession is the Speaker of the House. Imagine what would have happened if Dan Quayle had said something as foolish as that!

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In Philadelphia, where the city's court system had until recently allowed public defenders to use the honor system to bill the city for their work, one public defender submitted bills showing that on 18 days in 1991 he had worked more than 24 hours.

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To allow the Senate to conduct its affairs more efficiently, Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell announced that the 15-minute time limit allowed for senators to cast their votes would be cut, and that the limit would henceforth be 20 minutes. Under the 15-minute time limit, senators had often called from as far away as Washington's National Airport to say that they were on their way, holding things up for up to 40 minutes, so the 20-minute limit was a "cut." Nonetheless, Mitchell said that the voting period could be extended for "extraordinary" circumstances."

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Under a policy issued by the Maryland Department of Education, students suspended for disciplinary reasons are not penalized academically. Instead of failing exams or homework that they may miss, students are considered on "legal absences" and are allowed to make up the work when they return. Students have thus opted for suspension when they need extra time for an assignment.

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The Dade County School Board told a computer consulting firm, equally owned by a black and a Hispanic, that it was not a minority-owned business. In the county's definition, a business can qualify as minority owned only if one minority group controls 51 percent of its assets. Because Charles Duval, a black originally from the Caribbean, and Paul Raifaizen, who came to the U.S. from Argentina, each own 50 percent of Data Industries, the company was ruled ineligible.

Henry Fraind, spokesman for the School Board, says he sympathizes with Data Industries, but insists that "a rule is a rule, and our rule says that there must be 51 percent ownership by one principal minority group." "We're just trying to preserve the integrity of the system," he says, explaining that the county wants a "clear-cut" owner to avoid having minority businesses "sell out to white males."

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Federal auditors have discovered that 237 planes are missing, presumably misplaced.

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In New York, where work rules stipulate that school custodians be paid up to $80,000 a year, one janitor relaxed on his 34-foot cabin cruiser on school time, another ran a real estate law practice, and others paid off personal loans and bills by hiring "ghost workers" and pocketing the balance of the salary. The same rules require that they only have to wash school windows, walls and furniture once a year and mop school buildings three times.

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The Educational Reporter:

Teacher Bruce Janu sentences misbehaving pupils to the Frank Sinatra Detention Club, where they are forced to listen to Sinatra tapes. He has threatened repeat offenders with Tony Bennett and Mel Torme.

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After a Philadelphia Revenue Department employee was denied a promotion for routinely missing work to play pinball, this union filed an official grievance. The grounds: the worker was "compulsively and uncontrollably compelled to play" the game. The decision was upheld, but it took four years to exhaust the costly arbitration process.

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Asked about his new personal no-junk-food policy, President Clinton clarified, "I don't necessarily consider McDonald's junk food."

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In a rigged election in 1985, Samuel K. Doe proclaimed himself president of Liberia. In anticipation of protests in the capital city of Monrovia, the government-owned New Liberian newspaper announced that morning: "No Jubilation Allowed in the Streets."

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Journalist Terry Anderson, while writing an account of his 6 1/2 years as a hostage in Lebanon, has been trying to dig up information on nine men who held him captive. But when he filed a Freedom of Information Act request, the Justice Department turned it down, explaining that it would violate the kidnappers' right to privacy. The department informed Anderson that it would need either notarized privacy waivers from each of the captors, or proof of their deaths.

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When security cameras were installed at the Philadelphia Civic Center, guards refused to look at the monitors. Doing so was not in their union job description, and they would check the screens only if paid overtime. In six months, the extra pay cost the city nearly $70,000. The Civic Center shut off the cameras.

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An Indiana jury awarded $12,250 to a convicted burglar who was shot by a homeowner as he was fleeing the man's house. The burglar, who is serving a 12-year sentence for breaking into the house, sued the homeowner, claiming that the wound caused him intense pain and made it difficult for him to sleep.

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By being slow to inform the federal government that his mother had died, Olan A. Rand, Jr., an assistant professor of art history at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, collected $33,000 in Social Security checks deposited electronically in their joint account from 1981 to 1986. "Extreme procrastination behavior" brought on by depression is how Marshall Dickler, Rand's lawyer, explains the transgression.

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Feminists at the University of Minnesota filed a sexual-harassment suit against the school's Scandinavian Department, claiming, among other things, that a faculty member failed to smile at a graduate student.

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The Kansas state Senate has approved a bill allowing Kansas City to float $60 million in bonds to build a Wizard of Oz theme park.

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The Veterans Benefit Administration, concerned that it took an average of 151 days to decide whether a veteran was disabled, spent $94 million on new computers to speed up claims. Now it takes 140 days.

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After a ninth-grader was suspended when he brought a gun to school, he sued the Kelso, Washington, school district, arguing that he was denied due process. The student maintains that since he had no prior behavioral problems, the district should have used other punishments before suspending him.

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In a mock inspection of congressional offices, the General Accounting Office identified 140 violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Congress will not be fined the nearly $1 million other employers would face since Congress exempts itself from the requirements of the act, as well as other laws such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Freedom of Information Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act.

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In an act of astonishing stupidity, a Pennsylvania State University student asked the local police to retrieve a $1,200 stereo she gave to another student who agreed to a deal to take an exam for her, but who instead flunked.

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Members of the Organization for Liberation of Animals intent on freeing animals from human captivity snuck into the Como Zoo in St. Paul, Minnesota and cut a hole in the chain-link fence that surrounded the wolf exhibit, and called three local TV stations after succeeding. When camera crews and police arrived, they found the wolves lying around in the exhibit as if nothing had happened, despite a trail of raw meat left by their "liberators" to lure them out of captivity. "The exhibit is their home -- it's where they feel secure and safe," says the zoo's director, Victor Camp. "It's where they get fed and taken care of. Why would they want to leave?" Referring to the animal liberation group, Camp said "Our orangutans are brighter than these people."

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After Montana rancher John Shuler shot and killed a grizzly bear when it charged him on his property, a federal administrative judge slapped him with a $4,000 fine because the grizzly bear is protected by the Endangered Species Act.

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Concerned that he did not recognize an explicit right to privacy in the Constitution, opponents of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork managed to obtain records of his video rentals in an effort to discredit his character. All the movies turned out to be rated G or PG.

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Ego Brown, a black Washington shoeshine entrepreneur who besides shining shoes himself, also provided homeless people with clean clothes and training in the Ego Shine method, was shut down when the city decided to enforce an 80-year-old Jim Crow law forbidding shoe shining on the street. Barry Goldstein of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, commenting on the group's unwillingness to champion his cause, said the freedom to shine shoes reflected "the 19th century, not the future."

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Wearing a stocking over his head, Timothy Anderson walked into a Milwaukee McDonald's and pulled a gun on the restaurant's manager. As Anderson helped himself to the contents of the cash register, John Hobson, a security guard, ordered him to drop his gun. Anderson turned to point his gun at Hobson and the guard fired, wounding him seriously in the leg. Anderson made it to his car, where he was found a short time later, unconscious behind the wheel.

After being convicted, Anderson sued Hobson for unspecified monetary damages, saying excessive force was used against him. Anderson's attorney, Scott Anderson (who is no relation) explained, "The mere fact that you're holding up a McDonald's with a gun doesn't mean you give up your right to be protected from somebody who wants to shoot you."

Defense attorney Russell Goldstein, who doesn't think much of Anderson's case, joked wryly that because Anderson's wound cost him the use of his right leg, "he may be making a claim for earning lost because he hasn't been able to hold up anyone."

Actually, that turned out not to be the case. After Anderson was released from the hospital and before his conviction, Anderson was charged in another case. He had allegedly robbed a man who was making a call from a pay phone, taking $50. With his crutches in the back seat, he drove up beside the man, pointed a gun at him and demanded money. Anderson pleaded not guilty in that case.

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A sample of pork barrel programs, compiled by Martin Gross:

$6.4 million for a Bavarian ski resort in Kellogg, Idaho.
$13 million to repair a privately owned dam in South Carolina.
$3.1 million to convert a ferry boat into a crab restaurant in Baltimore.
$11 million for a private pleasure boat harbor in Cleveland.
$6 million to repair tracks owned by the Soo railroad line.

$2.7 million for a catfish farm in Arkansas.
$3 million for private parking garages in Chicago.
$144,000 to see if pigeons follow human economic laws. [!]
$219,000 to teach college students to watch television.
$10 million for an access ramp to a privately owned stadium in Milwaukee.

$20 million for a demonstration project to build wooden bridges.
$100,000 to study how to avoid falling spacecraft.
$33 million to pump sand onto the private beaches of Miami hotels.

[And there were dozens more, it was scary.]

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As part of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) enacted in 1973, money was used in Florida to hire people to go door-to-door persuading people to apply for food stamps. Maryland CETA workers chauffeured welfare recipients to the welfare office. New York CETA workers ran a phone service to let people know about their unemployment and welfare benefits.

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At a computer convention in Chicago, rules required that a union member plug exhibitors' personal computers into the wall. If you thought this was rather silly and plugged it in yourself, you would return to the booth the next morning and find the cord cut in half.

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In 1990, the Environmental Protection Agency, together with the Army Corps of Engineers, issued a memorandum to all EPA regional administrators to produce a "cluster of new cases... to provide an early deterrent to potential violations which might otherwise occur..."

In Missouri, when corn farmer Rick McGown repaired a sunken levee on his property, he was accused of illegally filling a wetland after an Army Corps official found a "cattail" growing on the land. McGown pointed out that the plant is a strain of sorghum he planted. If the corps wins its suit, the farmer will have to give the government one-third of his farm and pay a $7,500 fine.

In Nevada, a rancher who repaired irrigation ditches dug 75 years ago has been accused of "redirecting streams."

An Army Corps of Engineers ruling warns property owners that if, in dragging a tree stump from their land, chunks of moist dirt should fall off, that might constitute filling a wetland.

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In Arlington, Massachusetts, you need a license to become a storefront psychic, because the city government wants to protect the public from fraudulent operators.

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In Seattle, Customs inspectors applied a chainsaw to an imported cigar store wooden Indian to check for narcotics. The Customs Service does not compensate property owners for damage it does during inspections, nor is it obliged to. In another case, Customs inspectors who were searching for drugs disassembled an airplane, and the owner had to put it back together again.
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